The future of international relations remains unwritten. The next generation of International Relations graduates will play a crucial role in determining how that story unfolds.
“it has never been more important to insist on seeing (and challenging) the power dynamics of global politics that hide behind the headlines (…)”
As students settle into lecture theatres this Fall, the international system appears to be reshuffling itself in ways that would have seemed unthinkable just a decade ago. Yet paradoxically, these seismic shifts are meeting with what has become the era’s defining political response: a collective shrug. From London to Lagos, publics are increasingly responding to crisis media and politics of ‘shock and awe’ with ‘shock and yawn.’ We have seemed to grow accustomed to disaster imagery and ever-escalating cycles of crises. But with it comes also a sense of inevitability and despair, prompting people to retreat back into their homes, and focus on their ‘here and now’.
The ‘big shrug’ is a rational response to information overload and repeated crisis that never quite produces the promised transformative outcomes. We’ve lived through the ‘War on Terror,’ the 2008 financial crisis, Brexit, Trump’s first presidency, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and now the return of great power competition. Each was presented as a historic turning point requiring immediate action and sustained attention. Yet somehow life continues much as before for most people, whilst elites continue pursuing policies that seem to benefit primarily themselves.
The shrug, in this context, represents a form of resistance, a refusal to be perpetually mobilised by politicians and media figures whose credibility has been repeatedly undermined by events. It’s also a symptom of democratic systems that have become increasingly disconnected from the daily experiences and genuine concerns of their own citizens.
Yet, many of the most consequential power and wealth shifts that are happening right now rely on this sense of helplessness, confusion and distraction. For this reason, it has never been more important to insist on seeing (and challenging) the power dynamics of global politics that hide behind the headlines, and to pass on these skills to the next generation.
The New Geometry of Power
The autumn’s most watched diplomatic event will undoubtedly be the 80th UN General Assembly meeting in New York, taking place against the backdrop of the recent China summit that brought together Putin and Modi in what many observers see as the crystallisation of an alternative power structure. This isn’t simply the familiar story of multipolarity replacing American hegemony. What we’re witnessing is something more complex: the emergence of fluid arrangements that defy the neat categories of alliance and opposition that dominated twentieth-century international relations, at a time when the UN, and the norm-based institutional world order of the past eighty years, is faltering.
The China-Russia-India triangle exemplifies this perfectly. These are not natural allies in any meaningful sense. Their historical grievances run deep, their economic interests often clash, and their domestic political systems, whilst all authoritarian in different ways, emerge from entirely different philosophical traditions. What unites them is not shared vision but shared frustration with existing institutional arrangements that consistently favour Western interests whilst marginalising alternative approaches to governance, development, and international law. India, in particular, might be pushed into this alliance by the punishing tariffs imposed by the Trump administration in the USA.
For IR students, this presents a fascinating puzzle that conventional alliance theory struggles to explain. How do we analyse partnerships built not on common purpose but on mutual dissatisfaction? What does it mean for global governance when the world’s most populous nations are united primarily by what they oppose rather than what they propose?
The Minerals Race: Geopolitics Gets Physical Again
“the very technologies promised to liberate us from geographical constraints (…) are making control (…) more strategically vital than ever”
Perhaps nowhere is the shifting landscape more visible than in the rematerialisation of geopolitics. The rise of drone warfare, artificial intelligence, and high-tech military systems has created unprecedented demand for rare earth minerals, lithium, cobalt, and other resources concentrated in regions that traditional IR theory has often treated as peripheral to great power competition.
This isn’t simply a return to resource nationalism, it’s something qualitatively different and the theories and models of yesteryears may not offer a sufficiently complex picture. The Democratic Republic of Congo, which supplies roughly 60% of the world’s cobalt, suddenly finds itself at the centre of calculations in Beijing, Washington, and Brussels in ways that echo colonial extraction patterns whilst operating through apparently ‘post-colonial’ frameworks of investment and development partnership, with private companies acting as ‘like states’, with the financial power and private military to boot.
The contradiction is stark: the very technologies promised to liberate us from geographical constraints—the internet, AI, satellite networks, quantum computing—are making control over specific patches of earth more strategically vital than ever. What emerges is a picture of technological advancement that appears simultaneously revolutionary and thoroughly reactionary. Cutting-edge military capabilities that ultimately return us to very old-fashioned scrambles for territorial control and resource access, but with the unprecedented impact of the global financial system and multi-market entanglements. Students grappling with these dynamics quickly discover that understanding contemporary conflict requires moving beyond traditional security studies to engage seriously with environmental science, supply chain analysis, and the political economy of extraction.
Climate Crisis Meets Geopolitical Crisis
The upcoming COP30 in November arrives at a particularly awkward moment. Just as climate science delivers increasingly urgent warnings about irreversible tipping points, international attention has shifted decisively toward traditional security concerns. The war in Ukraine has accelerated European rearmament programmes that dwarf climate investments. Rising tensions in the South China Sea have prompted massive naval buildups across the Pacific. Even renewable energy programmes are now justified primarily through the language of strategic autonomy rather than environmental necessity.
This creates a perverse situation where the existential threat that requires genuine international cooperation takes a back seat to geopolitical competition that makes such cooperation increasingly difficult. European leaders speak eloquently about the climate emergency whilst fast-tracking LNG terminals and extending coal plant lifespans. American climate diplomacy operates alongside massive increases in military spending and fossil fuel production.
The disconnect reveals something troubling about how we prioritise threats. Climate change poses risks that dwarf anything conventional military threats can deliver, yet it consistently loses political attention whenever traditional security concerns emerge. Students entering IR need to grapple seriously with why international systems seem structurally incapable of addressing their most serious challenges.
Professor Noga Glucksam teaches on our International Relations MA programme, which you can apply for now for entry into Spring or Fall 2026.
Part 2 to this piece will release on 10th October.
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